Comfort Food

I knew the rumors about Luther and Alicia couldn't be true. Like everybody else I'd seen Luther's photos – the beautiful wife Yolanda, the darling children, and Luther himself beaming into the camera at the cookouts and the birthday parties. Besides, Luther was in his 30s, and Alicia was pushing 50. Luther was tall and handsome and had that knockout smile. Alicia was – well, unattractive. Moreover, Luther was a nursing assistant, and Alicia was to be an assistant Director of Nursing – my assistant, that is. But I think the very reasons the rumors couldn't have been true were the same reasons everybody found it so tantalizing to believe they were.

I hired Alicia after my former assistant decided out of the blue that she needed to be a stay-at-home mom. Alicia's credentials were excellent, and though it seemed odd she was so desperate to get the job, I signed her on at once. I was a bit desperate myself.

Alicia proved to be smart, organized, and quick on her feet. She answered her beeper like it just might be the President of the United States needing her to cover the weekend. She never once called out sick.

It did cross my mind that Alicia might be sick. She was thin and pale. Sometimes I detected a tremor in her hands. I've been around a while, and I know substance abuse when I see it, but I wouldn't have pegged her for that. Still, there was something about the way she breathed at times – shallow, like she might be splinting a pain somewhere – and the way she averted her eyes. Once I asked outright if she was OK. She gave me a fierce look and declared she was fine.

Sad to say, Alicia was deficient in people skills. Complaints drifted into my office. Alicia had an attitude. Alicia didn't listen. Alicia was cold and humorless and tended to cut people off. As for me, I got along with her well enough, and yet all I really knew about her was that she'd long ago divorced a husband, that her two sons were grown, and that she'd moved south because she was tired of the winters.

I think it was the food that brought Luther and Alicia together. Luther loved to talk food. He always had something big planned for his days off, and he'd charm us with his tales about secret sauces and his bread machine and stews, which sounded so good that (standing there in the nurses' station) you could almost smell them. Everybody said Luther belonged on TV: he was more entertaining than Emeril and better looking, too. On a really bad day, a whiff of Luther's leftovers just out of the microwave could almost make you weep.

In our facility, there were two camps at lunchtime: the café-downstairs camp and the brown-bagging camp. Of course, Luther brown-bagged. Alicia did, too, but for different reasons. She preferred to eat at her desk – black coffee with a nasty-looking energy bar or an occasional banana.

I wasn't witness to the first time they sat together in the lunchroom, but I can picture it: Alicia comes in for coffee and Luther is just digging into his homemade bean soup or his thick meatloaf sandwich. He says hello. And then? I guess the aroma of that comfort food gets to her somehow and she sits down.

Eventually they were sitting together regularly – which would have been fine, if only Luther hadn't switched to 3–11 and Alicia hadn't begun to hang around as late as seven o'clock; if only she hadn't been seen forking leftovers from his Tupperware into her own.

In time the rumors turned mean. The others came to me complaining that Luther took extra-long breaks with Alicia, while they had to work like dogs, of course. I had no choice but to say something – to Alicia.

I was careful, mind you. I sided with her, bemoaning the small-mindedness of some people, making light of it. She resigned the next day – no explanation, just that she was unhappy. It was a blow to me, and not only because it was an administrative nightmare. I felt downright queasy about it, as though I'd done something awful.

The others were glad to see her go. They forgave Luther, and he returned to their fold.

One day I looked up to find Luther hovering at my office door.

"There was something wrong with Alicia, you know," he blurted out.

I nodded, in hopes he'd tell more.

"She was no good at conversation," he said, frowning, like he was just putting it all together, "but she was starved for it all the same."

"I know," I said.

Luther shook his head and went back to work. And that was the end of that.

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